11 October 2006

so all of france is pissed off. not against me though--in fact they've offered me a bit of a present: an impromptu school vacation. i got up this morning to go teach, and when i turned the corner onto the street where the school is, i saw hundreds of students outside. at 9am, this was a bit out of protocol. then a bunch of my kids ran up to me to tell me that the students had taken over the school and barricaded it, so no classes for the rest of the day. you gotta love the french strike ethic; its like the american work ethic turned on its head. and instead of overworking, french students over-strike. but hey, only one of those gets me out of going to the jail.so professional as always, when they told me this i have to admit that my immediate reaction was to do the fist-pulldown accompanied by saying "oh fuck yes". this kind of thing is why the students like me, but also why they are pretty misbehaved in my classes. having a mohawk and teaching things like the grammatical joys of the word 'fuck' (there is no equivalent in french, plus fuck can be almost any part of speech, so i think it's totally valid) and how to do the cock-rawk-lock do not seem to imbue me with the ability to make them behave in class.but since the school makes it impossible for me to teach well, what the fuck (noun) do they expect?

by the way, the reason why the french are pissed off is not sarkozy (see picture below) (he was the one who was responsible for the recent riots, calling young men of color "voyous" [hooligans] and racailles [hoods], then saying he would bleach them [kacherise = a verb derived from a heavy-duty cleaning product] out of france.

text says: when i hear the word "ghetto", i go ahead and pull out my anti-riot gun

this time the hater is villepin (the prime minister). a quick key-player update: sarko is the racist and villepin is the sleazy capitalist. i propose calling him "vile pinhead". so anyway he has decided to push through a bill called the CPE (contrat de première embauche = first job contract) which means that companies can hire young people (under 26) without offering them a contract, and fire them at any time without giving notice or a reason. to americans, this doesn't sound so bad since most states have at-will employment, plus we americans, we work too much (the french work week is capped at 35 hours with at least 6 weeks of vacation a year). but i can understand why someone who goes and gets degrees and training and all this then tries to get a job with no security would be pissed. france is moving away from socialistic policy to sleazy capitalism. thanks, vile pinhead, for trying to push through a bill that 68% of france opposes strongly. don't you love elected representatives that represent their constituents like that? at least it means he won't get re-elected.